Early Modern English

Early Modern English

The main characteristic of the Early Modern English is the Great Vowel Shift as a result of
which long vowel sounds began to be made higher and further in the mouth while short vowel sounds
remained largely unchanged. Although the shift may have started some centuries before 1400 and
continued long after 1700, the most notable changes occurred in a couple of centuries, which is a
feature that distinguishes English from other languages that inevitably underwent a similar process.
During this short period English lost most of its pure vowel sounds and the phonetic pairing between
long and short vowel sounds.

It is believed that the main factor on this vowel shift was the large number of borrowings from
the Romance languages which required a different kind of pronunciation. It is exactly this
phenomenon that caused many of the oddities of English pronunciation. Some of the words
underwent also spelling changes to reflect the change of the pronunciation (stone from stan) but most
did not. In some cases two separate forms survived though with different meaning (parson which is
the old pronunciation of person) especially if regional variations are taken into account. Nevertheless,
the shift affected both native and loanwords.

Besides vowel sound changes, English saw some other spelling and pronunciation changes,
for instance: the Old English X (h in loch or Bach) disappeared, thus burX was replaced with –burgh,
-borough, -brough or –bury in English place names and in some cases it was pronounced as ‘f’
(cough, laugh). Quite a few other consonants ceased to be pronounced, like the final ‘b’ in lamb, the
‘l’ between some vowels and consonants (walk, talk), the initial ‘k’ or ‘g’ in knee, knight, gnaw.
Finally the ‘r’ after a vowel, but not before, lost its force (render, terror). Moreover, some spelling
changes that occurred during this time were supposed to bring logic into the chaos of the language but
ended up just adding to the chaos, for example a silent ‘b’ was added to debt and doubt, ‘s’ to island,
‘c’ to scissors, ‘h’ to anchor, school and herb, ‘o’ to people and the words perfect and verdict gained
their pronounced ‘c’, fault and assault the ‘l’ and adventure the ‘d’.

The English Renaissance which covers the 16 th and 17th Centuries had a great impact on
English as well. During this era the vocabulary was mainly deliberate borrowings and not due to
invasions. A huge number of classical works were translated into English, although Latin was still
considered to be the language of education. Thus a lot of Latin words were imported including Latin-
based adjectives where no adjective was available for an existing Germanic noun (marine for sea) or
merely as an additional synonym (masculine and feminine in addition to manly and womanly,
paternal in addition to fatherly). Furthermore, a whole category of words ending with the Greek-
based suffixes ‘-ize’ and ‘-ism’ were also introduced around this time.

There was also a tendency to coin words from borrowings. This is known as inkhorn. Most of
inkhorn terms have not survived, though some of them have remained now in common use (dismiss,
disagree).

On the other hand, some writers who were against borrowings, tried to resurrect older English
words (gleeman for musician) or to create wholly new words from Germanic roots (endsay for

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conclusion, speechcraft for grammar, foresayer for prophet). Nevertheless, most of these were short-
lived.

The final major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of printing press.
The first book printed in English was Caxton’s own translation “the Rewyell of the Historyes of
Troye”, followed by some 20000 other books ranging from mythic tales and popular stories to poems,
phrasebooks, devotional pieces and grammars.

At the time of the introduction of printing, there were five major dialects which had a variety
of spellings both between and within the dialects (the word people was spelled in 22 different ways);
the –ing particle was spelled as –and, -end, -ind (running, runnand, runnend, runnind); the –th and –
eth verb endings of the south appeared as –s and –es in the north (goeth –goes).

A lot of efforts were made to set standard spellings, however, it was the printing press that
was really responsible for carrying through the standardization process and since most of the
publishing houses were located in London and considering the fact that East Midland triangle
(Oxford-London-Cambridge) dominated politically, commercially and culturally, the dialect and
spelling of East Midlands became the standard English. However, there were some cases where
northern English forms were accepted as standard, such as ‘they – them – their’.

Some of the spelling criteria included the use of double vowels (soon) or a silent final ‘e’
(name) to mark long vowels and doubled consonants to mark preceding short vowel (sitting). And the
letter ‘u’ and ‘v’ which had been interchangeable became established as a vowel and consonant,
respectively, as did ‘i’ and ‘j’.

The Early Modern English era brought also the first English dictionary “A Table
Alphabetical” which contained around 2500 of ‘hard words’, especially borrowings, though it was not
a very reliable resource. Years later another dictionary was compiled “An Universal Etymological
English Dictionary” which contained about 60000 entries. However, the first reliable dictionary is
considered to be Samuel Johnson’s “Dictionary of the English Language” (1755) which had 43000
words. About 150 years later came the “Oxford English Dictionary” which is considered to be much
more comprehensive.

In addition to dictionaries, many English grammars were also written during the 18 th and 19th
centuries. The most influential was Lowth’s “A Short Introduction to English Grammar” which was
extremely prescriptive. Lowth was the main source of such “correct” grammar rules as a double
negative always yields a positive, never end a sentence with a preposition and never split an
infinitive. This was opposed by Joseph Priestly in his “Rudiments of English Grammar” where he
states that grammar is defined by common usage and not prescribed by self-styled grammarians.

The Early Modern period (16th – 18th Centuries) is often referred to as the Golden Age of
English Literature because it was during that time that the scholars started writing in English (as
English had not been considered to be a proper intellectual language), though even in the 18 th century
a lot of scholars (More, Newton) still wrote in Latin. It must be noted here that these scholars coined
a lot of words mainly with Latin-based roots, some of which are still in use (describe, animate,
maturity, exhaust).

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In the 17th century dialects began to be considered uncouth and an indication of inferior class,
though they provided good comic material for plays. That’s why they were used by playwrights, thus
being introduced into general usage.

Important writers and playwrights of the Golden Age Era include: Edmund Spenser, John
Donne, John Milton, John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, Thomas Wyatt, Ben Johnson,
Christopher Marlowe, John Webster and of course William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare managed to change the language to a significant extent. He took advantage of the
relative freedom and flexibility of the language at the time. Thus he played with his nouns by using
them as verbs, adjectives and adverbs. He coined about 2000 neologisms, most of which are still
commonly used. He also introduced countless phrases still in use (vanish into thin air, brave new
world).

By the time of Shakespeare the word order had become more fixed, the auxiliary verb ‘to be’
was still used instead of ‘to have’ (am come), do was sometimes used and sometimes not, past tenses
were still in a state of flux (different forms were used digged and dug), plural noun endings were both
–s and –en, the third person singular was marked by either –eth or –es.

Late Modern English (1800 – present)

Modern English is usually considered to have begun in the 19 th century and lies in its
vocabulary since the pronunciation, grammar and spelling remained largely unchanged.

There were two factors that contributed to the vocabulary of the Modern English: The
Industrial Revolution and the rise of the British Empire.

Most of the innovations of the Industrial Revolutions of the late 18 th and 19th century were of
British origin. A lot of words were coined for new products, machines and processes and in some
cases old words were given entirely new meaning (vacuum, cylinder). Another English speaking
country, the USA, continued the English language dominance of new technology and innovation.

British colonialism, on the other hand, was a two-way phenomenon. Thus English both lent
and borrowed words from its colonies, such as shampoo, tank, jungle from Indian, boomerang,
kangaroo from Australian. With the process of colonialism different variants of English started to
emerge. But, although there were speculations that this would lead to whole new branches of English,
just like the Germanic language fate, due to global communication, this does not seem to be the case.

The British colonized about one fourth of the world. Certainly the English language had its
impact on all these countries. The Australian Aborigines were small in number so English managed
to impact their language more than they did English. Thus, an Australian version of English became
the official language of the country. The same happened in New Zealand which wanted to emphasize
its national identity showing the difference from Australia. A similar history took place in South
Africa, which started to be populated by the British in 1820. The Dutch had been in South Africa
since the 1650s but the British managed to anglicize the Afrikaans and the black population and in

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1822 English was made the official language though with a distinctive homogeneous accent (like in
Australia). Moreover, in East Africa, although British trade began in 16 th century, it was only in the
1850s that the British rule began, and six modern African states, once British colonies, gave English
official language status on achieving independence in 1960s. As far as West Africa is considered, an
interesting development occurred, due to trading and the existence of a lot of languages, several
English-based pidgins and creoles arose, many of which still exist. With India the story differs a bit
because upon establishing trading companies in India, the British first had to learn the various
language of India in order to do business. But soon, schools and Christian missions were set up and
British officials began to impose English on the locals, thus English becoming the medium of
administration, army, business and education despite the fact that it is much less important than
Hindi. English also became the language of power and elite education in South-East-Asia while
Papua New Guinea developed a pervasive English-based pidgin known as Tok Pisin (Talk pidgin)
which is now its official language.

Despite the fact that English had quite a great impact on these countries, it was the discovery
of the New World that flourished the language. English colonization of North America had begun as
early as 1600 which means that the first settlers spoke a dialect similar to Shakespeare. Some of the
pronunciations and usages remained unchanged with the English in America while in Britain they
continued to evolve. That is why in some respect American English is closer to the English of
Shakespeare than Modern British English is (AmE: gotten as opposed to BrE: got).

Naturally enough, although quite conservative in this aspect, the contact with the Native
Americans brought to the language quite a lot of words, though mostly native lifestyle, animal and
food terms (raccoon, tomato).

Considering the fact that in the second half of the 19 th century millions of people migrated to
America from different parts of the world, it is only fair to acknowledge that different dialects of
English were created. However, with the improvements in transportation and communication, this
dialects started to become less distinct (less than the dialects in Britain) and by the 19 th century a
standard variety of American English developed in most of the country, based on the dialect of the
Mid-Atlantic states with its characteristic flat ‘a’ and strong final ‘r’. Today, Standard American
English is based on generalized Mid-Western accent.

After the Independence (1783) there was some discussions whether English should remain the
national language but it was never really in a doubt and was not even mentioned in the new
Constitution (even today the USA, Britain and Australia do not have an official language).

The American dialect has been formed due to the big number of borrowings from Native
people’s language, Spanish and some French. There were also a lot of American coining which, in
fact, were exported to Britain, as well, as did Americanized spelling changes (horror, emperor).
Nevertheless, today about 4000 words are used differently in the USA and in Britain (lift-elevator,
tap-faucet). Moreover, there are some differences as far as spelling is concerned. The spelling
changes in American English are the merit of Noah Webster, who, through his dictionaries, managed
to put forward changes such as center instead of centre, jeweler-jeweller, color-colour, defense-
defence, check-cheque, plow-plough, etc.

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On the other hand, even though taking ownership of the language and developing the
American Standard English was seen as a matter of honour, it was opposed by Britain and even some
more conservative British Americans. Nevertheless, Webster’s ideas were accepted, especially when
the Merriam-Webster dictionaries were published. It even went further when Andrew Carnegie
established the Simplified Spelling Board which resulted in the American adoption of some words
(ax, program, catalog), though some other recommended changes found resistance (yu, filosofy, def).

English in Canada has also been influenced by successive waves of immigration, the main
impact having come from the Loyalists of Pennsylvania and New York with their distinctive
pronunciation of ‘ou’ (house) and ‘i’ (light). Canadian English today contains elements of British
English and American English as well as loanwords from the native peoples of the north (igloo,
anorak) and French.

The 19th Century produced a large number of writers, such as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley,
Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, etc. The language of Jane Austen appears to all intents and purposes
modern in vocabulary, grammar and style. She used the ‘correct’ grammar as dictated by Lowth.
Some of the words in her books have undergone a mild change in meaning (compliment meant
merely polite or conventional praise, genius was a general word for intelligence not anything
exceptional). Mary Shelley, Jules Verne and Lewis Carroll introduced new ideas, new concepts and
so of course new words. But some revolutionary works came in the 20 th century with Virginia Woolf,
T.S. Elliot and James Joyce. Joyce had taken English to a whole new level, creating neologisms using
compounds (allwhite, bigmost) or blended words (wherend, guardiant). Joyce’s books are difficult
works of fiction thus even today they are more written about than read.

The 19th Century was also the time when the Oxford English Dictionary containing 415000
entries, supported by 2 million citations with over 15000 pages in 12 volumes was compiled and was
accepted as the definite guide to the English language.

In the 20th Century there were concerns (which still continue) that the language was going
downwards. This was especially pointed out by Sir Ernest Gowers, who started the movement of
“Plain English”, because a lot of coined words, according to him, were technical terms that needed to
be avoided, though not in legal documents. But in more recent years there has been a trend toward
plainer language in legal documents, too.

The 20th century brought a massive number of words into English, starting from words
connect to wars (radar, brainwashing), to electronic and computer terminology (byte, cyberspace), to
science fiction literature (robotics, nanobot) and finally to Internet (download, blog). In addition, a
whole body of acronyms, contractions and shorthands for use in email, social networking and
cellphone texting has grown up.

In recent years there has been an increasing trend towards using words as a different part of
speech, especially the verbification of nouns (to email, to google).

The language continues to change and develop and to grow apace, expanding in incorporate
new jargons, slangs, technologies, toys, foods and gadgets. Neologisms are being added all the time
(most recent: selfie, parkour, unplugged).

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